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Weighing
risks for mad cow disease
June 5, 03
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
Mad
cow disease is a frightening prospect.
The fatal illness is caused by a freak of
nature, a misfolding protein called a
prion that kills by "eating"
holes in its victims' brains.
Prions are not life forms like viruses or
bacteria, so they can't be killed through
sterilization or cooking. There is no
treatment, no vaccine, and no way, yet,
to test for mad cow disease in a live
animal.
How concerned should you be?
Because so much remains unknown about the
illness – formally known as bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE for
short – there are few simple
answers.
But one thing is clear. Measures adopted
by the U.S. and Canada to detect BSE and
prevent its spread through the beef
supply are far less stringent than those
in Europe and Japan, where BSE already
has been a problem.
The Wall Street Journal last week called
this fact the beef industry's "dirty
secret."
For example: The U.S. last year tested
only 19,900 cows for BSE. Britain tests
that many each day, and Japan tests every
cow slaughtered for human consumption.
The government's most important line of
defense against BSE is a ban on recycling
the remains of cows into feed for other
cows.
But efforts to enforce that ban are
inadequate, the U.S. General Accounting
Office said in a report last year.
The GAO said some companies in violation
of the feed ban had not been reinspected
for two or more years. In other cases, no
enforcement measures had been taken
against companies found in violation on
multiple occasions.
The Food and Drug Administration's
inspection data were "severely
flawed" and, "as a result, FDA
does not know the full extent of industry
compliance," the GAO said.
Since the GAO report, the government has
taken some steps to strengthen efforts to
keep BSE out of the country. But other
steps have not been taken.
And the U.S. Department of Agriculture
has not adopted a GAO recommendation
designed to inform consumers about food
products that contain or may contain bits
of cow brain or spinal column, the parts
thought to be at highest risk of being
tainted by prions.
Which products are those?
Cuts of meat with bone still attached
(such as T-bone steaks), hot dogs,
hamburgers, sausages and other forms of
processed beef. Beef stock and beef
flavoring, too.
Government officials, seeking to reassure
consumers about the safety of beef
products, are quick to point to a 2001
study by the Harvard Center for Risk
Analysis. Based on computer simulations,
the study concluded that the risk of BSE
spreading in the U.S. was very low.
But the GAO report says the Harvard
study's simulations relied on some
assumptions that the study's authors
conceded could not be verified with
confidence.
So, how is a beefeater supposed to
reconcile reassurances from government
officials with criticism that not enough
is being done to protect the food supply?
It's not easy.
For now, it appears that BSE poses a
relatively small risk to individual
consumers. However, the economic crisis
that could accompany the discovery of BSE
here poses far greater risks to the $56
billion beef industry and to industries
that use beef materials to produce
cosmetics, medical products, dietary
supplements and other goods.
When evaluating the risks of BSE to
yourself and your family, keep in mind
the known -- and perhaps more mundane --
dietary concerns about beef: It contains
high amounts of saturated fat and
cholesterol. Eating beef increases your
risk for coronary artery disease and
cancer.
You can replace some or all of the beef
in your diet with veggie burgers, and hot
dogs, sausages, and burger crumbles made
from soy. They contain much less, if any,
saturated fat and no cholesterol, and
they’re far better for your health.
And they taste good, too.
Note: You can download the GAO report at http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-02-183.
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